Dropbox For Business: Right For You?

Dropbox for Business wants to be taken seriously as an enterprise tool. Consider these 5 facts to decide whether Dropbox is your best option.

3. Dropbox isn't just for storage; it's also a collaboration platform.

Though individual users often rely on Dropbox for simple, on-the-go access to files, the cloud can be much more than an online storage locker. Dropbox for Business also features shared folders, which enable IT admins to give a team of collaborators shared access to important files, even if those collaborators are scattered around the world. Given that documents can be synched back to the cloud as soon as they are modified, the folders facilitate pseudo-continuous interactions.

At the same time, Dropbox allows users to easily roll back to an earlier version of a file, virtually eliminating the chance that an important document will be accidently deleted or inadvertently overwritten. Dropbox also includes a few features to help get the collaborative process rolling, such as online document previews that are accessible immediately after a user logs in, before files have to be downloaded to a local device.

4. Dropbox is flexible.

In today's bring-your-own-device (BYOD) landscape, many IT departments need to enable document access for a variety of devices and operating systems. Dropbox is well-equipped for such challenges, as it offers apps for Linux, OS X, Windows, Android, iOS and BlackBerry.

Dropbox for Business can also be set up to provide cost flexibility. A handful of paid accounts might be responsible for maintaining shared folders, for example, but collaborators with free accounts can still be given access to these folders and their contents. As a result, businesses can spread Dropbox's full benefits throughout the workplace without paying for each and every user's access.

5. Dropbox will be a better deal for some than others.

Dropbox for Business is priced at $795 annually for up to five users, plus an additional $125 per year for each additional user. For this price, customers receive all the storage space they need, and have the ability to synch, transfer and store particularly large files. This pricing structure has been praised by some but, depending on one's needs, competitors such as Box, Google Drive or Microsoft's SkyDrive might offer a better deal. Google Drive, for instance, offers not only prices that are generally cheaper, but also a variety of plans.

Looking for the perfect platform for online storage (cloud ), I found COPY .com, a service just launched by Barracuda Networks, a well-known provider of network security and anti-spam.

The first thing that catches the attention of COPY .com is that their referral system is incredible. Since they are new on this segment, they want to make sure that everyone will be looking for Copy.com and to do that they had the bright idea of giving away a free 15GB account But if you sign up through a referral link (like mine here), you can get 20 GB of free space instead of 15!The nest part does not end there: for every person who installs and registers COPY through their referral link, validates email address and installs the client software Copy.com will credit 5 GB of additional space to you and to the new subscriber. For the moment the space you can get for free is UNLIMITES, so take advantage now if you need online storage space: DO YOU NOW before they change their mind!

In all features, COPY is very similar to Dropbox: you have a centralized folder where everything that moves or copy into is automatically uploaded to the cloud service of Copy.com and synchronized between all of the computers where we will have installed it. You can access your files from iOS devices, Windows, MacOS , Linux, Android, everything is transferred over SSL and encrypted on their servers, which use a combination of public and private key and AES 256.

But there are some specific details that make it unique Copy.com:

- you do not need to copy or move the files in the root folder of necessity: this was the requirement required to Dropbox for a long time, and Copy.com does it very well. Just create a shortcut to any folder into your Copy folder and all content in the destination folder will be synchronized and backed up online as well, staying in its original place in your hard drive! So just leave things where they are and simply create shortcuts, it works perfectly. Strangely, this is not advertised as a main feature on their site.

- You can set permissions for shared files. For example, you can set a user to be able to "edit and synchronize" or "Read Only".

- Fair Condivision: If you want to share a folder, the amount of space used is "charged" dividing it among the members participating in the group. So if you share a folder of 50 GB among 5 people their space will not be deducted 50Gb each (like Dropbox does ) but only 10 each (⅕ of 50Gb). To explain this with an example:

- User A wants to share a file of 50GB with User B - User A and B both have user accounts 100Gb.

- User B synchronizes the file. The 2 users then see only 25 GB of space used for this specific action .

- User A decides to share again with another user , user C.

- The user decides to synchronize C and now everyone sees this action by using about 16GB of space.

If you need a lot of space, their plans are very attractive. But before you run out of your 15 or 20 Gb free (if you register by clicking here: https://copy.com?r=oB79am) it will take a long time!

- Security: being a service offered by Barracuda Networks, which has always worked on security products , I think this is a must for Copy.com.

Conclusions.

Try it yourself, you get 15 GB free at Copy.com directly or even better get 20 GB free if you sign up by clicking here: https://copy.com?r=oB79am. Let us know on the comments what you think of the service.

I have been experiencing great Dropbox service for my business. So if you want to run your your business efficiently and wanna get best secure environment and easy access for your busines data i strongly recommend Dropbox. You can view detailed review and its features here. Source: http://www.cloudreviews.com/dr...

This is a good article for the pros and cons of the service. Something to think about with any service is the type of 3rd party tools that are available. For example, BoxCryptor (www.boxcryptor.com) is an application that encrypts your files on DropBox and other cloud services, reducing some of the security concerns mentioned in your article. WebDrive (www.webdrive.com) maps a network drive to services such as DropBox (as well as corporate FTP/SFTP Servers) so that users and applications can access the files as if they were on the local network. In fact, these two programs work very nicely together.

Perhaps I am missing something here ... but howcome you have no comparison with the similar service called simply Box? Our law firm elected to use Box for secure and business related file sharing before DropBox seemed to get the idea that it needed to add some features to be more business-like. Thoughts on Box vs. Dropbox ??

Office 365's Sharepoint and SkyDrive Pro components offer a much more compelling, capable, and AFFORDABLE platform vs. DropBox for Business. Not to mention that O365 also includes the entire Exchange groupware platform as well as the Lync platform for communication. Hands down no contest imho.

Thanks for the comment, thparkth. Very interesting to learn which of the various selling points actually matter to you in practical usage. I assume since your company uses Dropbox that Google Drive, Box et al were also objectionable in certain ways? It sounds like the sync function is what you're really paying for. Even if the product has problems, are you seeing a meaningful increase in productivity and collaboration?

As a current enterprise customer, there are a few problems with the offering:

* At least one of those $125/year accounts will be wasted because you typically need an administrator account for the IT support group to use.* There are no great options for dealing with account holders leaving the company on bad terms. There is a high likelihood of data leakage.* The quota model is basically broken. Want to share large files with an external company? They'll need to pay for a dropbox subscription, even though the files are in *your* storage.* We have no control over backups etc.* The basic idea is broken. We have file servers, all over the world. Our marginal cost to store things on our file servers is peanuts. We don't need Dropbox's disk space. The only thing that makes it attractive is their desktop sync software. If someone sold software that did desktop sync for remote users to our file servers, we'd buy that instead.

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